The American Senator

Niagara Falls, mid-19th century print

In March 1999 a group of us on Trollope-l began a reading and discussion of The
American Senator (1876). We read this book as a single one and during most of it I took it
upon myself to write a faciliating posting each week. This was a lively discussion where we canvassed much that is of vivid interest in this novel. It's not a novel which is sufficiently known or paid read with care. It has much to say to us today about human nature as it manifests itself through society.

February/March

Photograph of a hunt in progress, circa 1910

February 20th: Introduction: The International Theme: British and American Ocean-Crossing; Elias Gotobed: Naif in a Satire; Perceptions & Personal Life & Political Situation; The Specific Moment and Personal Context

March 7th: Chapters 1-7: A Landscape and Genealogy; "billycock" defined; Home-y World; Arabella as by James Tissot;
More Class Scrutiny & Hierarchies and Costs of Fox Hunting (A Careful Examination of Class
and Study in Materialism); A Genealogical Chart; Goarley and Gotobed (The innards of British
versus American culture and mores); Luxuriating in Detail; Larry Twentyman; Early hunting
scene unexpected; Gotobed ridiculous; Hunting Hypocracy; : Sympathies with Goarly and
Reginald Morton; Fox-Hunting in other books; Surtees; World War One Memoirs; Fox-Hunting;
More on the Genealogical Chart; Why All This Detail?; Hunting as a Bloodsport; Bloodsports;
Transgressive Women Hunt.

March 14th: Chapters 8-13: A Walk in the Wood; Hunting a Bloodsport and
a World where no one reads (Why the Animus Against the Erudite, Scientist or Reader);
Digging out the fox and other queries; Arabella, Trollope's niece, our contemporary; A New
Zealander, Satiric Naif; AT's depiction of Americans; The Lady and the Fox; Dillsborough, Where
Is It?; Five Reviews and a Shocker; Charles Reade; Mostly on Trollope's Reputation, the
Senator, and Trollope's Americans.

March 28th: Chapters 21-26: Arabella as a Tissot; Trollope's Taste in Women; The Women Paralleled; As a Serialized Novel and the Original Illustrations.

Frederick Walker (1840-75), Spring, 1864

April

April 4th: Chapters 27-32
: Sympathy for Major Caneback?; Minor Career Men; Wonderful Bird!; The Heroes, the Animals,
and the Outsider; Major Caneback's Cruelty to Horses; Trollope's Use of Letters; Gotobed & the Other Characters; So many unlikable
Characters; Lord Rufford; They Said Go West, Young Man, and AT Did: Gotobed a Version of
Trollope Himself; Analysis/Comparison of English v Americans at Heart of Book; Senator
Gotobed; The AS: Loving as a Lord.

April 11th: Chapters 33-38: The AS: Another Arabella; Names with "A," Huge Sums & Slaughters; Serpentine
Self-Directed Spite; Parallel Plots; Mistletoe & Trefoil; Shooting; Characters who can and cannot
know themselves; Many complex characters in this book; Racy Lord Rufford and Arabella at
Mistletoe; Arabella as a Superior version (as a character) to Becky Sharp; Trollope and Austen:
Arabella Trefoil and Austen's heroines; Arabella Trefoil, Becky Sharp, Lizzie Eustace and Mary
Crawford; Different Yardsticks; Arabella Doesn't Pretend to Herself; Portrait of Arabella, a 19th
C. English Ideal or a Frigid "Big Blonde?"; Arabella humble flower or weed (as Trefoil); The
Desperate huntress; Arabella: Personality Disorder or Self-Contempt?; The Third Rate Woman
who Marries the Third Rate Male: The upper class disguised version of the myth of the pariah-slut?; The Pleasure of Power; Power-Seeking in Trollope; The Relationship of Power and Fear;
The Drive for Power Comes from Fear of One's Own Insignificance?; The Prime
Minister and Fear of Death.

April 18th: Chapters 39-44: Trollope's wit; The Rich Center of the Book (The Alien/American Among the Brits); Mary Masters
and her Father/Mary Masters and Reginald Morton; The Hardships of Arabella's Life; Back to
Arabella; Compassion for Arabella; Arabella's Honesty; Negative Capability in Trollope; AT:
Anton Trendellson and Arabella Trefoil: Mischievous Self-reflexive joking?; The AS:
Go West, Young Woman (Arabella Characterized as an American); The AS:
Arabella's Anger; Arabella as the Poor Aristocrat; Arabella as a Tragic Figure; Arabella Again;
Lord Rufford not such a fool? and Mounser Green the Man; Arabella the Unhappy Addict; The
Ennui of it all; Arabella Poor Thing with no time at all even in small ways.

April 25th: Chapters 45-50: Hunting just like the gentle jousting in Ivanhoe; Sir George and Lord Rufford;
Letters as Actors; Larry Twentyman and The Hunt; Arabella a good wife for Rufford?; Cruelty to
and Cruel Women in Trollope; Mrs Masters and Reginal Morton; Mary Masters and Arabella a
Study in Contrasts; Why is Larry Twentyman not a Gentleman?

Sir Henry Henshall (1856-1928), Behind the Bar, 1882

May

May 2nd: Chapters 51-56: The Hero of the Book: Senator Elias Gotobed; Telling Truths (or, That'd be telling); The Title;
The Senator on Strikes; Gastric Fever & the Wretchedness of Larry; The Title, the world of
Dillsborough once again; & the Senator as Anti-Hero with Larry Twentyman his contrasting mirror.

May 9th: Chapters 57-62: You can prove anything if you get to make up the evidence (Trollope and stories which support
Burke and are anything but feminist); Parallels between John & Reginald Morton and Elias
Gotobed; Mr and Mrs Masters, A Victorian Portrait of a Typical Marriage: Today Mrs Masters
would not get away with her bullying; today she could divorce this "unsuccessful man" and be
admired (for all we know); A Victorian Portrait of Trollope's own marriage?; Dominatrix; 'Family
Values' -- Pathologies, anyone?; Mary and Larry; Women characters as Subjects Rather than
Objects.

May 16th: Chapters 63-68: Motes and Beams; The Threads are Winding Up; Arabella's last stand (True Grit and Hurtle-like);
Who is the Hero? the Heroine?; Arabella and Lord Rufford; Another Take on Goarly (from
Godwin's Caleb Williams); You see Scrobby happened to displease my lord (or, Off with Him to Botany Bay); Reginald and Mary; Dillsborough and Columbine High
School.

May 23rd: Chapters 69-74: Arabella "instigated by the true feminine Medea feeling"; Large Reaches and Lunacy; Just
Deserts?; Blood Sports; Improbable Switch in Reginald Morton's Character; The Validation of the
Social Order; Mr Masters is Made Happy and Triumphant at Last; Gentlemanness (Larry
Twentyman once again); Genealogies: Blood and Upbringing; Rank and Sex (The Match
between Reginald and Mary).

May 30th: Chapters 75-80: The Thug Element in Manliness; How Much Did We Like It?; The American Senator at Home; A
Masterly 19th century Novel; The Titular Character and Close; The American
Senator as serial writing; Trollope's Confidence; Immediate Circumstances for the Writing of The American Senator; On Serial Instalments in Trollope in General.

Embarkation of General M'Clernand's Brigade at Cairo: "The generals and
commodores were gone up the Ohio river and up the Tennessee in an expedition with gun-boats
. . . " Trollope's North America, Harper's Weekly, VI
(February 1, 1862), 72